1936-09-18 — Page 22

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THE

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER

18, 1936.

The BIRTHS of the

This print of 1820 shows children employed

in a spinning mill They were often strapped and beaten at their work.

T would be difficult to over- estimate the importance of the Births and Deaths Re- gistration Act. The bene- fits that have flown from R, especially to the workers, are great!

Ye, curiously enough, refer- eneza to it by historians and other writers on that period are low and hard to and

It set for the first time a Blat Department in London, pre- nuded øier by Registrar-General who, duty it was to collect and kop exact records of these twa mor events in the lives of all elti

That Department is now situated at Bamsel itouse. મ stroke- Fried, dreary buticing in the Strand, not far from the island churches of St. Mary, where the parents of Charles Dickens were married, and St. Cletnent Dane, where Mrs. Lirriper. "very par- Lal to evening service not too crowded." rented a pew with gen- feel company and her own bas- sock.

The Registrar- General shares Somerset House with the Probate of Wilts Registry and the Income Tax authorities: dismal com- panions enough. But the place has an interesting History.

There queens once walked: Inigo Jones died; Oliver Cromweli lay-in-state: Crabbe wrote; and, Inter, Nelson came in fils hosslan pigtail.

♡

To-lay, your name, reader. 1s edshrined there; mine also for that matter. And one-day, inevitably, both will appear there again-for the last fine.

The keeping of these records sects to us now absolutely essen- tial to the well ordering of the 10 the community: necessary smooth working of much of the

To-day's Thought- EVERY night and every morn

Bome to misery are born.

-WILLIAM BLAKE.

The P.&O. Banking Corporation, Ltd.

(Incorporated in England, 1920).

Authorised Capital

Subscribed and Paid-up

Deserve Fund

HEAD OFFICE.

£5,000,000.

2,694,140

£80,000

117-127, Laudenbail Birset, London, E01

WEST END BEANCIL.

14-10, Cockapur Street, Londen, D.W.1, BRANCHES--Dombay, Calcutta, "Callent Colibatore, Oolombo, Hongkong. Maditas.

Shanghel, Singapore.

Agencies-in all principal towns of the

world.

General Exchange' and Banking businma transacted. Lowga and overdrafla granted on approved security. Current and Fland Deposit mocnents.opened,

BAVINGS ACCOUNTS IN LOCAL CUR' RENCY)-interest allowed at 2% per annum. 'STERLING SAVINGS ACCOUNTS← Interest allowed at rate which may bhlained on appilostian,

TRAVELLERS' LÝTTERS OF CREDIT and TRAVELLERS' CHEQUES lawsed; wid Passengers Letter of Credit for me only on Board P. & 0, and D.J. Steamer 'and mi sorts of Cali.

British Income Tax Recovered. Executorships and Trusteeships undertalma,

W. J. WÄDDINGTON,

Manager. Hongkong, 17th April, 1986.

NATION

One Hundred Years Ago to-day the Births and Deaths Registration Act was passed. One of its earliest benefits was to enable factory inspectors to learn the true ages of children in employment.

by W. G. HALL

social legtsia-

tion on the Statuto Book, and vital as a safeguard against crime.

None

of these consider- ntions, how-

ever,

was re-

sponsible for the introduction of the Act.

It wna, passed because another measure, which at long last gave Dissenters the right to solemnise marriages in their own way la right previously enjoyed only by Quakers and Jews), left a page that required filUDE.

Not until after it was passed did the common people realise the protection it gave them against untimely death.

Early death then was a common- place. Life was cheap, particu- arly, among the children of the poor. The Act made every death a matter of nubile record and un- explained death the concern, possibly, of a coroner's jury.

Nor, until after it was put into operation, was it realised how useful I would be to reformers in Their struggle on behalf of the factory children,

Robert Owen, father of British Socialism and a pioneer of Co- of children operation, speaks commonly employed at the age of five, sometimes at the age of three.

"It took," saya Spencer Walpole. "twenty-five years to legislate to restrict a child of nine to 60 hours a week and that only in cotton nille."

And he might have added that even then the regulations were largely a dead letter owing to the difficulty of establishing a chlid's real age.....

Under the 1833 Factory Act four inspectors had been appointed. It was their duty to see that no child under nine was employed in ntactory and that none between the ages of nine and 13 worked more than eight hours in the 24,

But some parents did not know, and others pretended not to know, Just how old their children ware,

The evidence they offered, often In dirty scraps of paper, was of doubtful valuc and frequently forged.

One Inspector, who took his job seriously, had eventually to insist on a doctor's certificate that the child had the "ordinary strength and appearance of a chlid of nine." Even this makeshift was un-

THE

satisfactory. Doctors, dependent as they often were on the goodwill of factory owners, occasionally had curious idens as to what consti- tuted the "ordinary strength and appearance of a child of nine."

And parents sometimes sent an older child to the doctor and the certificate afterwards to the fac- tory with a younger one.

So, though it took a decade after Its passing to be of use to them in their unequal, struggle against their hunger-ridden parents and the callous and often brutal millowners, the Births and Deaths Registration Act must be reckoned In a very real sense among the reforms that have helped to eman- cipate British children from fae- tory serfdom.

It passed through Parlament without much opposition. In this it was luckier than the Act to establish machinery for taking a census of the population.

That measure had to be dropped when it was first proposed in 1753 for fear the wrath of God would descend "In some great publie misfortune

dis- or epidemical temper."

Not until the beginning of the 19th century did Parliament decide to risk it.

The Census Returns and the Registrar-General's Statistical Re- view are a mine of fascinating In- formation. The apparently dry tables and Ngures there set forth speak of clinnges and tendencies of the utmost human interest.

Seventy to eighty years ago the population in the leading countries of the world was advancing rapidly. So rapidly, in fact, that It was confidently expected to double itself in about sixty years.

There was then a very real fear that the earth would at no distant date become overcrowded.

This was a great weapon in the hands of reactionaries. They saw, or professed to see, in the rigours of the industrial system. the hand of Providence and God's Good Purpose in a high death rate among the poor,

قلة

To mitigate capitalism. would, they thought, be simply asking for trouble. Even thoughtful working men were afraid,

They needn't have been.

Bince their time the standard of life has risen Immensurably for the masses, The workers have wrung

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advances from the possessing clacson all along the line. Thanks mainly to these, the infantile death-rate in Great Britain has practically haived itself in the last thirty years and the expectation of

Richard Oastier, "King of the Factory Chil- dren," died 75 years ago next Saturday. His efforts were largely responsible for the passing of the first Factory Act in 1833. Ifistorians have ignored him, but his cham- plonship was the beginning of the aboliiton

of child labour. ..

life for everyone has extended. Yot population has not shown the vast inercano early Malthuslans feared. By 1951, in fact, it will have begun to drop.

The population of these islands is now about 45 millions. By the end of the present century will have gone down, they tell us, to 17 millions. And when my auc- cessor comes to write up the bi- century of the Act of 1835, In another hundred years time, it will be no more than 5 millions, unless poison gas gets us all in the mean- time; and half of the people then ilving will be over 60.

Large families have gone out of tushion. The majority of families now consists of three persons-father, mother and one child. Scotland heads the list of areas in which the larger familles are found, with Northumberland and Durham, South Wales and the Midlands some distance behind.

There are two millions more women than men in Great Britain. But more boys are born than girls. Women must be toughert They

T

longer. Young certainly live people are drifting south. North- umberland and Durham. and parts of Scotland and Wales will soon be peopled largely by the clderly.

The British are a nation of town dwellers. Nearly half of them live in towns of over 60,000 inhabi tants.

Lancashire and Cheshire are more densely populated than the whole of Australia. London and the South East contains more persons than the whole of Norway. Sweden and Denmark put together.

The population of London is moving outwards. In 1923 the tube was extended into the Surrey neids at Morden. Now that station is handling the largest volume of traffic on the whole Underground system.

Thus are enormous land values created. But, stupidly, the com-. munity leaves private Interests to enjoy them.

ROUNDABOUT

By The Showmạn.

HE-Dear-Fellow, who keeps me so well informed about Boclety, recently drew atten- a considerate London

£0

.tion

hostess.

It I her custom, when asking im poverished young men down to the country for a week-end, to send them not only a first-class return ticket but a pound note for tipping her own Bervants,

It was a very good racket for the impoverished young men, but I think we ought to let the Dear Fellow know that it has been stopped.

Butler Stops Racket LAST work and this hostess' butler. approached Mr. Derek Marma-

Jade, commonly known as the Budest Rat of Mayfair, and said It's not good enough, sir."

"What isn't good enough? "

Ang for me, sizponce for Albert, threepence for the chaußeur and threepence for the housemate out

of the pound you were sent."

"Oh, isn't it?"

"No, sir. Especially as you usually, pincha dozen of the master's cigars, Alty cigareties, and a bottle of pin every time you come."

**Well?"

"Hand over the_elphteen shillings and you can keep the goods! "

So you think you've-gat me where you want me, huh?"

"Yeah!

"Oh, yealı?":

And yeah it was Aren't you thrilled, Dear Fellow, that this blow has been struck for traditional' British hospi- tality? I suggest we both go out and have our tics pressed to celebrate it.

Doris Speaks Her Mind COME fellows seem to thick they've only got to look at a girl, and she'll go down on her knees and thank then! There was I sitting on the front-in between showers-with a nice book, and one of those sumartles had to sit down next to me.

*Ilaven't we met before, somewhere, sometime?" he saya

"I don't think so," I said, polite, bul -you know.

'Olt. come!" he says, very roguish. "Be kind, sweet lady! You wouldn't make me took a fool, would you?"

"I couldn't," I said. "It's the work of nature."

How's that for a nice, quiet one?

Slump In Sensations

THE Jugoslavian Centenarian News Service seems to have collapsed. together with the Burmese Cow Do- spatch Associction.

1 rely on them once a month at icaat. Now they have failed me. Al I can find, by way of compensation, is an assertion that woman in Parla aro dyeing their hair to match their dogn.

I can add that they sit up at cock- tall parties and beg for salted al monds to be balanced on the noses:

also.. that they wear the ducklest te twred muzzles in the street.

Fatat-hearted Toreign correspond». ents, please copy.

BALLAD INSPIRED by the announcement

that Mr. Walter Runciman Presi- dent of the Based of Trade ta spending his holiday studying agricultural con- ditions in Denmark,

There was wunelmut Called Kunciial

Who sailed a lavht Test sucht.,

He has sailed this time To Denmark's elime, In search of this How to grow parzalps. Then with bulging bu o Denmark's DE- Ricultural wheezes Flo; seek bone breez Anit hope he'll make Hure, for Elflet's sake, How parentigin are buttered "Wik word nafily altered. Too Much Trouble

BECAUSE there were not enough

passengers, the train service be tween Vindtvestock and Foraritchnnya. of the at the eastern terminus North Manchuria rallway, has been suspended-"The service is now oper ating only between Vladivostock and Grodeveko."

And the reason for the shortage was that passengers found it much easier to sayGrodereka."

Wags' Corner

A FARMER niet one of his meit

coming home, drenched to the skin. It was a fine day, so the farmer naked him what he find been doing. "Well," said the man. I've just bech living a game of cricket with the old bull, down by the pond, sce? He won' The toss and sent me in first."

Mr. says Peppercorn:

WHEN I read

about a land. scape gardener who died a month or two ago, at the age of 07, leaving £96,000, it made me open my eyes and I haven't closed them properly yet.

Ho staried as a garden boy at Ds, a week and left tiis fine 870-acre estate to the nation..

I don't know the whole story, but either. Chero's more in gardening than I thought, or it was some- thing in the man.

Now I come to think of it, wasn't there a smart grocer in Bolton who turned his shop into an umpteen million soap combine, while there must have been other grocers in Bolton who just remained grocers?

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